Pilots are subject to many factors that can impair performance, such as fatigue, cognitive overload, and attention tunneling. Fatigue is a common issue during both long and short haul flights, due to long operating hours, high and stressful workloads, jet lag, short turnaround times, and other factors. Fatigue reduces pilot alertness and reaction times, and results in failure to monitor flight critical information. The current approach to monitor pilot fatigue is based on best practices and self-assessment rather than independent measurement.
Attention tunneling is the involuntary fixation on an information source, which results in a pilot's failure to monitor other information sources. Attention tunneling can be attributed to high or unusual workload environments, automation induced complacency, display location, and other factors.
Cognitive overload refers to a pilot's inability to process a high volume of visual, auditory, cognitive, motor, speech, or tactile information. High workload driven by phase-of-flight requirements and pilot alertness, operational protocols, and poor human machine interface designs can adversely affect a pilot's cognitive processing of information.
Flight time and rest time are monitored, and fatigue mitigation strategies are implemented for long haul flights; however, there are no fatigue monitoring systems to actively monitor and detect pilot fatigue in real time, and substantially no strategies to combat attention tunneling and account for the cockpit's cognitive workload. Currently, break periods are specified as formulaic rules not adapting to pilots actual condition.
Consequently, it would be advantageous if a device existed that is suitable for biometrically monitoring pilots and co-pilots to identify fatigue, sub-optimal cognitive workload, and attention tunneling.